SECTOR: Environmental Protection / Sustainability
EMPLOYEES: 15 full time
THE CHALLENGE
About LA Compost
LA Compost is a community-based nonprofit organization dedicated to establishing and promoting community composting. With its model of decentralized community compost hubs, the organization’s impact is felt throughout the city of Los Angeles, strengthening and empowering communities by creating shared spaces for people to connect with each other and the natural environment. Compost hubs are intentionally established in locations where people congregate and coexist—churches, schools, gardens, and workplaces—and each reflects the community in which it’s located and mobilizes community members as stewards. LA Compost also collaborates with a wide array of partners, including community gardens, neighborhood councils, and city agencies.
As a new organization that experienced rapid substantial growth immediately before and during the first two years of the pandemic, LA Compost felt the need to stabilize and strengthen their organizational culture, especially in light of the tensions inherent in a diverse team of employees and partners spread across a large geography.
THE APPROACH
Holistic Embodied Trauma-Informed Resilience-Oriented Capacity Building for Staff
LA Compost partnered with Lumos Transforms for a 6-month holistic embodied trauma-informed resilience-oriented (eTIRO) program. LA Compost sought to increase its workforce’s capacity and resilience by acquiring the knowledge and skills needed to improve trust, empathic communication, cultural responsiveness, and establish just pathways to conflict resolution. The organization recognized that stress and trauma were adaptive reactions as staff navigated distributed community work. Lumos developed a customized training series to fortify LA Compost’s organizational culture by resourcing staff with the knowledge and skills needed for consistent, value-aligned communication and conflict resolution.
Building on Lumos’ signature program, The Resilience Toolkit, the training series centered on cultivating skills needed for a long-term, sustainable healthy workplace culture – embodied self-awareness, nervous system and emotional regulation, and empathic interpersonal connection. The program followed the Toolkit’s core progression of awareness → discernment → coherence → transformation, helping staff identify their stress responses in real time, assess their usefulness, choose appropriate regulation practices, and build capacity for sustained engagement. Practice groups provided opportunities to deeply integrate embodied resilience knowledge and skills, supporting robust individual and team learning and growth.
The training included four key components across ten sessions: Embodied Resilience (three sessions), eTIRO principles (two sessions), Compassionate Communication (two sessions), and Embodied Harm Repair (two sessions), with a closing integration session. Lumos scaffolded The Resilience Toolkit with specific eTIRO training focused on compassionate communication and harm repair, both foundational to sustaining a healthy workplace culture and the sustained staff engagement on which generative conflict resolution rests.
THE RESULTS
Staff Self-Awareness, Compassionate Communication, and Connection
“Working with Lumos this year was such a life-giving experience. Our training occurred during a period of growth within our organization, and it was incredibly helpful to leave each session with new tools and resources to improve the overall culture at LA Compost. The Embodied Resilience Approach and Toolkit were especially helpful for me, and we continue to utilize several learned skills during our regular practice sessions that we hold as a team. We’re now reimagining our own policies around conflict resolution as well as how we hold an authentic space for honest dialogue to occur between team members and the community we work alongside.” Michael Martinez, LA Compost Executive Director
Program evaluations demonstrated significant knowledge and skill gains. Participants’ ability to identify their stress, trauma, and relaxation responses increased substantially, with average ratings rising from 4.17 to 5.33 on a 6-point scale. Even more dramatically, their ability to discern whether those responses were appropriate for the situation improved from 3.50 to 5.17. Staff also reported greater understanding of individual and collective aspects of trauma and enhanced capacity to identify and attune to stress and trauma responses in others (with most staff moving from “sometimes” to “very often” or “always”).
The sessions provided an opportunity for colleagues to learn more about and connect with their peers, a rarity given that much of LA Compost’s work is geographically dispersed across the city. One participant noted, “I realized that most of the staff at LA Compost do not know each other well at all; this is the case even for staff who have all been part of the organization for many years.” The program trained LA Compost staff in applying humane values that not only prevent trauma, but also foster a compassionate culture of equity and justice. Participants reported significant improvements in self-awareness, compassionate communication, and connection to their colleagues. They are now able to identify their stress responses in real time, and use an embodied approach that considers how stress manifests for them physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially to determine whether or not those responses are appropriate. As one staff member described: “I am much more aware of my stress levels, which allows me to show up in a more present [way].”
As stated above, participants reported using Resilience Toolkit practices to regulate their stress responses, allowing them to feel more fully present and engaged at work. These skills helped participants identify and attune to stress and trauma responses in others, which disrupts reactivity and generates empathic connection.
Finally, participants developed an understanding of their shame responses and the role of shame resilience in harm repair, laying the groundwork for successful conflict resolution. Staff specifically highlighted gaining shared language, including “reflective listening, shame resilience,” and learning “how to spot shame and guilt and shame resilience.” One participant noted learning that “everyone could have some trauma, and triggers and shame affect how words and actions are received.” Increased awareness, along with developing non-judgemental listening skills, extended to their colleagues and the communities they work with.
LA Compost continues to practice together in regularly scheduled, peer-led practice groups, further integrating this work into the organization’s culture.
